After searching for an artist to post, i limited my choices to two things. Must be female (since last week was male) And she cant just be a video artist, she has to be one i like.
Janet Biggs
Currently stationed in New York City, Janet Biggs is a video artists that tends to lean towards environmentalists or extremists. She has worked with miners, bikers, champion wrestlers, synchronized swimmers and arctic explorers. She has had exhibitions in various states in the country. Her work has been given quite a bit of recognition by the New York Times, the New Yoker, Art in America and many others. Her work has gained her enough recognition that she became the recipient of quite a few grants from the Arctic Circle Fellowship/Residency, Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council, and so forth. She received her undergraduate degree from Moore College of Art, graduated with her masters from Rhode Island School of Design. Among other institutions, her work has been shown at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Gibbes Museum of Art, South Carolina; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Vantaa Art Museum, Finland; Linkopings Konsthall, Passagen, Sweden; the Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum, Austria; and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australia, and many more.
The reason her work is unique to me in that she found a way to take extreme activities, things that are more probable than normal to result in near death experiences and she turns them into these very serene videos. The people and environments she captures is just astounding. She found the art in nature and people, and shot the combination of them at their most extreme interactions and turned it into something beautiful. She almost had a slight music video appeal to me, except her work seemed to be more of a teaser. Some of them were just a glimpse into what only silent visuals could capture. I understood why she decided to keep audio to the natural sounds and to a minimum when it comes to most of her work because audio would've more than likely distract from the intensity of what you're seeing.
Links:
Home: www.jbiggs.com/index.html
Bio: http://www.jbiggs.com/bio.html
Videos:
http://www.vimeo.com/jbiggs/videos
http://www.jbiggs.com/vinstall.htm (Each Video is only an excerpt)
I really like Wet Exit. It made me feel like I was going under water and coming back again. The shots flowed very well together. Also I enjoyed all the movement and Janet choosing water. It made you feel like you were drowning and could not escape.
ReplyDeleteJanet Biggs chooses great combinations of music and visual when showcasing some dangerous activities that humans do. The shots she takes of the activity shows just enough to tell you what they really go through. And the shots of the person "performing" the music is very well done. They seem to collide together to make a work of art.
ReplyDeleteWow, what incredible artwork! The juxtaposition of the chorus music and the footage in Vanishing Point was so intense. I love the way she had clips of the chorus and the motorcyclists interchanging and the video focused on both, which made me wonder what the point of the video overall was (not just the excerpt). I really loved the last 10 seconds of that clip too, for the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite video was "Brightness All Around." I noticed several recurring themes, such as nearly every shot having an obvious light source (headlamp, headlights, fluorescent bulbs, etc), and each progressive scene takes place deeper underground. The tension in this video is palpable, with the music growing more and more intense as the subject descends, and the seemingly endless tunnel scenes reminded me of nightmares in which you run but never progress.
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